“Hoops—­what for?” said Billy.  John laughed.

“Please don’t, John,” she said, “it’s too dreadful.  Oh!  I hear the whistle.”

“Mark,” said Mrs. Ann, “if George Grey comes—­James, did you leave the wine-closet key?”

“Yes, my dear.”

He turned to Leila, and kissing her said, “A year is soon over.  Be a good girl, my child.  It is about as bad for me as for you.  God bless you.  There, get on, Ann.  Yes, the trunks are all right.  Good-bye.”

He stood a moment with John looking after the vanishing train.  Then, he said, “No need to stay here with me, Mark,” and the rector understanding him left him waiting for the westbound train and walked home across the fields with John Penhallow.

John was long silent, but at last said, “It will be pretty lonesome without Leila.”

“Nice word, lonesome, John.  Old English, I believe—­has had its adventures like some other words.  Lonely doesn’t express as well the idea of being alone and sorrowful.  We must do our best for your uncle and aunt.  Your turn to leave us will come, and then Leila will be lonesome.”

“I don’t think she will care as much.”

Rivers glanced at the strong young face.  “Why do you say that?”

“I don’t know, Mr. Rivers.  I—­she is more of a child than I am.”

“That hardly answers my question.  But I must leave you.  I am going to see that scamp misnamed Lamb.  See you at dinner.  Don’t cultivate lonesomeness, John.  No one is ever really alone.”

Leaving his pupil to consider what John thought rather too much of an enigma, the young clergyman took to the dusty highway which led to Westways.  John watched the tall figure awkwardly climbing a snake fence, and keeping in mind for explanation the clergyman’s last remark he went away through the woods.

CHAPTER VIII

Penhallow had gravely told John that in his absence he must look after the stables and the farm, so that now he had for the first time in his life responsibilities.  The horses and the stables were to be looked over every day.  Of course, too, he must ride to the Squire’s farm, which was two miles away, and which was considered a model of all that a farm should be.  The crop yield to the acre was most satisfactory, but when some one of the old Quaker farmers, whose apple-orchards the Squire had plundered when young, walked over it and asked, “Well, James, how much did thee clear this last year?” the owner would honestly confess that Mrs. Ann’s kitchen-garden paid better; but then she gave away what the house did not use.

Very many years before slavery had become by tacit consent avoided as a subject for discussion, Mrs. Ann critical of what his farm cost, being herself country-bred, had said that if it were worked with Maryland blacks it would pay and pay well.

“You mean, dear, that if I owned the labour, it would pay.”